On January 1, Rap Monster shared his self-produced track “Always” via Soundcloud, as well as posted the lyrics and a short message on the group’s blog, in which he explained that he had worked on the song in early 2016.

“When I was going through a hard time, I didn’t want to just let those feelings pass, so I made a record of them, but thankfully I’m feeling a lot better now!” he wrote. “However, it would be a bit of a shame to just let the song go because the emotions have passed, so I’m sharing it.”

He added that although he had planned to work on it a bit more and edit it, he decided to just leave it as it was in order to preserve the feeling from that time. “Also because when you’re sad, a sad song can be the biggest comfort,” he wrote. “Happy 2017!!”

Take a listen to the track below.

Fans have responded to the release of the track by trending the hashtag “Always_love_you_남준” (남준 is Rap Monster’s real given name Namjoon) on Twitter, and it is currently at the number one spot worldwide.